


these are just grey shaped memories

by hallowed (AMRainer)



Series: as told through history. [3]
Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Developing Relationship, F/M, He was, Some artist Cosimo peppered in here despite how IRL he wasn't an artist at all, True Love, also some jealous Cosimo because let's face it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27046054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMRainer/pseuds/hallowed
Summary: he uses charcoal to transform her into art, but it seems nothing can ever capture the daintiness of her essence.
Relationships: Contessina de' Bardi/Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici
Series: as told through history. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824556
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	these are just grey shaped memories

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of their weekend in Careggi!! Hopefully I will get around to wrap with a third part that's their ~night~ together.
> 
> After that's all done, I might actually reason why they pushed away from each other as I already started on that particular oneshot, so it should be quite the angst rip.
> 
> In any case, I was half asleep when I wrote this, so bear with me?

Charcoal pressed on the paper, created shapes and patterns with a smoke that was natural to this technique. Blues of his eyes thought it to be a mere expression of the pale moonlight that kissed her skin, fetched a glow as his wife laid bare with a blanket cladding her figure.

Left only shoulders on display, her long hair spread in wild curls, profile pressed to the pillow as she clung to the white linen as if she was rather cold. Her expression was peaceful, lips delicately parted as she dreamed of something he knew not — but hoped to be good, perhaps even have something to do with the manner he attempted to more openly bestow affection upon her.

Surely, he would never write poems, declare his love as her former court had. For the sake of pretending he cared not, Cosimo would erase the name Ezio in conversation, but the memory of his mentioned existence did not please him in the slightest.

The first time he felt married to her, that she belonged to him in a sense that he did not expect to mind. All that difficult beginning pushed aside temporarily the instant he heard Albizzi’s taunting whisper to one of his puppets that Contarini was around and how the man would certainly fawn over Contessina.

It made Cosimo’s expression turn sour, a flick of lids as he narrowed his sight and frowned in bewilderment at how enraging the thought of another barging in like that and causing his newfound nemesis speak with such certainty that his wife would’ve rather ran away with Ezio had it not been her father’s request. Of course, the man never acted on the sentiment, chose to bottle it up and throw it away as if it wasn’t there ( but it was, and perhaps he ensured his wife was kept busy at home at the period by offering her an ounce of attention more, only to pull away the moment her former interest left ).

That was vile, he reckoned, yet the Medici heir was no good with sentiments, especially with the previous conflict he dealt with when it came to his wife. He saw her as the duty his father required, as a future he wished not to have. . . she was the final thing that bound him to something that he attempted to stray from.

However, that was in the past, and he sighed in contentment once he managed to form the perfect smoky image on the paper. Transform her into a sketch as he watched her sleep from his armchair near her bedside — had taken the spot only to achieve that task.

Lost in his recollections, he hadn’t noticed the brightness of drowsy optics that had stirred awake from the scrutiny of his blues upon her. Only the Earl’s daughter had chosen not to move, simply gawk in fondness with a question as to what he was doing up at this time and to why he had been staring at her ( as if she knew his reasons, that he turned her into a shaped pattern ).

“How long have you been up?”, surprisingly, it had been him and not her to start this interaction, as the younger brunette would always tend to be more communicative between them than he could ever.

“Enough to witness the machinery of your thoughts working. . .”, enough to make her wonder why he couldn’t tear his vision away from the paper on the wooden support on his lap.

A void question was laced to her sentence. _What were your thoughts? Would you like to share? Tell me more, Cosimo, I wish to know you better_.

Brought her back to the argument they had before he swayed out of the room, only to come back a while later and press her against the door, drive her out of air and thought, then do it all again on the comfort of their marital bed. Ah yes, even as they had been intimate shortly ago in the present, Contessina would always yearn for him as she did for no other.

Her husband had other plans, his hand moving to hesitantly display the drawing afore he shook his head and landed the board on the bedside table. Stood in his almighty nudity, moved towards the window and caught a quick glance of the goblet he had dropped on the floor hours ago when his wife presented herself with nothing left to wonder on their bed.

And she noticed his reticence, almost as if he denied himself to even enjoy the activity. Contessina had heard the tales of the man who wanted to be an artist, that he found perhaps more pleasure in the sketches and the plans of the monuments, than actually the inherited craft of the Medici family. Little did he know such creativity and erudite trait would ensure their future as he’d run the business like no other.

Greens adjusted to the dimly lit room, scanned the drawing as she stood barefoot and wrapped into a thick duvet. It was herself she saw, lost amid the bed as if it engulfed her, kept her safeguarded from nightmares. Brought a slight smile to her face, vision moving from the paper to him as she chose to approach him with calm steps — wishing not to startle him, wishing he would welcome her demonstrations as much as he had been trying to.

First, a single palm. Splayed between his spatulas, felt his skin afore she traced curve of his ribcage on the right in order to rest that same hand against his abdomen. Second, it was her opposite arm to loop around him and meet, let the warmness of the blanket keep them near.

“Something troubles you”, her musing, vague as to leave trail for answer.

Clearly, he was debating. Whether it was a good moment to tell her the truth ( that he thought most of his youth that he was to blame for a death, that his mother thought him capable of such ungodlily act when he had been as old as 7 ). Part of him wished to know what his mother would think when he came of suiting age to take his inheritance, and the other half just shut those idea immediately out of fear, yet certainty, that she wouldn’t ever be proud of the man he became.

Her cheek rested on his back — a soft touch that had one of his hands covering both of hers on his navel while its opposite griped the corner of the pillar on the wall quite tightly. Knuckles whitened, telling her that he dreaded what he was to speak of, that he almost prayed she wouldn’t ask questions as others would. Contessina knew better, understood him better even though they hadn’t been married for such a long period.

There was this soothing aura about her, from the way she knew to listen and knew to speak, the manner she wouldn’t push him when she found the limit. At first, they both struggled, but those letters they exchanged through the months most certainly added to the discovered comfort.

It was in a particular pause he put, the manner his words grew more passionate or dutifully direct, that his wife figured him out. Dot and comma and then swirl of a quill after the other.

“I had a twin brother. . .”, he started it open into the silence, blues trained on the landscape before him as he saw the city into the distance ( had chosen this room for himself years ago for that very matter ). “Damiano was his name, and—”

A pain splashed over his tone, broke the words as he downcasted his face in subconscious shame that he couldn’t even acknowledge. Tried to remind himself it wasn’t his fault, tried not to let the haunted tone of his mother’s accusations and his father’s deafening silence in agreement to echo in the back of his mind.

But if he were to do it, then he might as well pay his brother one last respect — that it was to say it to the younger brunette’s front the whole truth, not to hide any longer. That reasoned his movement in her arms, his azure tints taking her in for a moment, when her scantily clad figure meant not for the pleasure of the flesh, but the metaphorical clarity of this all.

No barriers, no walls that were still to be built, just _him and her_ and the truth.

He lifted his orbs to meet hers, found the entire universe in them and grew aware once more that she was to be trusted. That she hadn’t judged him even when he deserved so, even when he had been such a complicated man, even when he had pushed her away for reasons that she shouldn’t be faulted.

“We were seven, _I_ gave him the idea to play by the river alone, so we ran out shortly after lunch and while we were in it, he—”, a halt, lips quivering as he tried to articulate the completing sentence. “He was swallowed by the water, never came back until later we found him— _dead—_ because of—”

_Me._ Not the water, not the nature. _I am to blame, Contessina, and I don’t know what to do with this._

The Medici heir tried to add, only to hold back his tongue as jaw clenched almost enough to click. Guilt washed over, despite how he so often acted as though he was plenty aware not to be his fault. They were children, it shouldn’t fall on small shoulders that had barely learned how to stand in posture for themselves.

Feminine hand reached for his, squeezed it gently as she let the duvet go and held onto his palm with both extremities as she would many times to come.

“I know, my love, I have for a while now”, not that it was in _that_ river, not with that vivacious amount of details, but Piccarda could hardly keep it to herself in the months her daughter-in-law was alone in Florence.

How could she ever judge this all when her family had stories of their own? After her mother, in a moment of desperation, had asked her father in a sorrow-laced tone why God would take away all their children and keep _only_ her. As if she was little, not the boy as they would have preferred, maybe.

It took time to heal from that, but she knew her mother never meant that — those were merely lost ramblings in the throes of grief. And grief. . . _oh grief._ It did unspeakable things to people, bent even the most pious of the souls or corrupt of the humans. That was why Contessina saw both ends, that was why he would find nothing if serene comfort in her porcelain visage.

He was taciturn, glassy-eyed and with a clog in his throat when he decided it was time to let go. So Cosimo leaned in to press his forehead to hers, both palms engulfing hers as they made it into an unbreakable lace.

With a quiet vow that she wouldn’t mention it ever again, he basked in the small glory that she had known. _Yes_ , she had, and, regardless of all things, the amiable way she looked at him when he met her downstairs of the Casa Vecchia upon his return from Rome hadn’t changed in the slightest.

And it wouldn’t, not in the many years to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated! <3


End file.
